How to Develop a Consistent Targeting Strategy

By Shane Atchison | Mar 2, 2009 3:51:04 PM

Targeting, a hot-topic marketing practice, deserves digital marketers' attention. Targeting can help marketers deliver the right content or message to the right person, at the right time and in the right space. But targeting can be an ambiguous concept. Often it means different things to different people.

Most digital marketers divide their efforts between offsite and onsite targeting. Offsite targeting comprises advertising and demand-generation activities like search, display, and e-mail. They drive performance by sending traffic to your online real estate. Successful marketers recognize that traffic by itself won't guarantee success, so they apply site-side strategies to maximize performance once a visitor lands on the site.

Today's holy grail for targeting requires the integration of off- and onsite targeting efforts. This happens too rarely, however. Ask yourself these questions: How often does your paid-search team seek data and insights from the person who manages Web site analytics? How often do your site-optimization efforts employ data and insights from the teams that manage search and display media?

Below are the most typical and effective forms of off- and onsite targeting, as well as tips for how businesses can successfully bridge the divide so targeting represents one consistent marketing strategy, rather than separate parts of a disjointed and sometimes ineffective effort.

Offsite Targeting

Most ads are served contextually, meaning that if you visit auto site Edmunds.com, you'll probably see a lot of ads related to cars. But offsite targeting is more precise. Here you rely on a huge network, or networks, to provide different ways to serve traffic based on user behaviors or profiling. The targeting can happen by any number of factors. For example:

• Geotargeting. Only shows ads in states or regions where a business has retail stores. This is common for both display and paid search campaigns.
• Interest group. Only shows an ad to someone who has visited a Web site on a specific topic (such as autos) in the last month.
• Prior view. Shows someone who viewed but didn't click on the first ad a second ad with a free-shipping coupon.
• Demographic targeting. Loosely targets display ads to network sites that fit a general demographic profile. Paid-search platforms like Microsoft adCenter offer user-based targeting and allow for incremental bidding where demographic criteria like gender and age can be identified.
• Day-part targeting. Serves an ad during specific times of the day and days of the week.

While results vary greatly depending on product, business, season, and so forth, the industry has pretty much proven that targeted ads consistently outperform their generic and even contextual counterparts.

A popular form of offsite behavioral targeting is search re-targeting. Here, an ad-serving platform can identify a person who has performed specific searches in the past. A corresponding display or text ad can then be served to that person across select network sites they visit. So if you've searched for "new cars" or "hybrid cars" on Google, don't be surprised to see display ads for the Ford Fusion Hybrid or Toyota Prius when you start browsing other sites later in the day. (You might want to think twice about what you're searching for, because if your spouse reads this column and sees a bunch of unsavory display ads on your home computer...well, you get the picture.)

Onsite Targeting

Onsite targeting relies on a more focused array of characteristics to align a Web site to what a visitor should experience. In addition to offsite parameters (geography, interest group, etc.), as well as other general parameters, such as referring source, you can use any authenticated data (i.e., information kept behind a login) to provide a personalized site engagement for each visitor. As with offsite targeting, there's no industry average for how a targeted Web site improves business. But anecdotally it isn't hard to see how a customer will more likely return if the Web experience closely aligns to what she's clicked on, viewed, or purchased before. At my agency, our site-side targeting test programs are among the most effective ROI (define) proven services we provide for clients.

Amazon and eBay are industry leaders of onsite targeting. Each individual eBay or Amazon user could experience a completely unique site, depending on their past behavior and profile. If you've been looking at auctions for Xbox consoles, then the next time you visit eBay, you'll probably experience a site that features Xbox games, Xbox accessories, and related products. Whether you sell or buy, how much you pay, what types of products you buy, and what time of day you tend to buy certain products are factors that drive onsite targeting.

Fortunately you don't need to be an eBay or an Amazon to take advantage of site-side targeting. Tools like Omniture's Test & Target and Optimost allow companies to deliver targeted site experiences.

Bridging the Divide

Bridging the divide between off- and onsite targeting efforts will be unique for every business, but here are some recommendations:

• Define success. You may think this is obvious, but at my agency we consistently find that separate teams and stakeholders have different definitions of success. It's critical that your teams work together and toward the same goals.
• Understand targeting mechanisms. Different ad-serving technologies offer different types of targeting -- behavioral, geographic, demographic, and so on. Make sure you understand their capabilities. Test and use them. I'm particularly excited by new targeting technologies that allow for search re-targeting.
• Use one consistent targeting strategy. Even though this sounds logical, it's more difficult than it sounds. Onsite and offsite folks don't talk to each other often. You will need to establish a process to ensure this happens.
• Share data. Once you get your teams and stakeholders playing for the same goal, encourage them to share data. And not arbitrarily. At my agency, our search team consistently delivers keyword trend and performance data to our onsite optimization team. This allows our optimization team to design tests and targeting strategy based on offsite opportunity. Likewise, our analytics team shares behavioral and attitudinal data with our media teams. Everyone has a consistent standard for what success looks like. There is no divide between offsite and onsite.
• Test, measure, execute. Repeat. Don't assume you're getting it right. Validate your strategy with consistent testing. For onsite, A/B and multivariate testing are excellent programs. Don't stop when you get promising results. Execute, measure, and repeat the process.

 

Insights into the Emergence of Search Analytics (Initially Posted on ClickZ)

By Shane Atchison | Jul 2, 2008 2:54:15 PM

In grade school, I really wanted a pair of Velcro tennis shoes. My parents obliged. Shortly after, I decided that I needed a pair of new basketball shoes (before I realized I was too short to succeed at basketball). My parents couldn't understand why I didn't just wear my new velcro tennis shoes. I tried to explain that each served distinctly specific functions. No dice.

While site-side Web analytics platforms are an appropriate, central hub for understanding overall digital performance, many marketing professionals still find it necessary to use complementary analytics solutions for more specific needs. Media and ad trafficking platforms are necessary for measuring display ad and paid search performance. Panel-based analytics are necessary to understand industry and competitive trends and insight. While these tools are all of an analytics nature, they each serve distinctly specific functions.

My Velcro shoes belonged on the street; basketball shoes were necessary to play basketball (or at least look good on the court). I don't want to replace my Web analytics platform, but I need a supplement for specific marketing functions to make effective business decisions.

SEO (define) continues to grow as a legitimate area of focus for enterprise marketing professionals. It's unequivocally the most efficient method for traffic acquisition, compared to paid search or display advertising, where costs scale with increased traffic. This makes SEO especially attractive in a recessed economic environment.

But we need to understand SEO performance at more granular level. Typical, high-level metrics provided by site-side analytics tools, like referring traffic or keywords, don't provide enough depth or breadth to make deep, effective decisions for SEO.

I recently spent some time with Richard Zwicky, founder and president of Enquisite, a search analytics solutions provider. I'm impressed by Enquisite's unique analytics capabilities specific to SEO, and I asked Zwicky to explain how search analytics can be an appropriate complement to a traditional Web analytics tool.

Shane Atchison: Let's start with the obvious question: why are marketers demanding more insight from search analytics?

Richard Zwicky:The budgets, activities, and expectations that drive search engine marketing -- SEO as well as SEM [define] and paid inclusion -- are all on the rise and are increasingly competing with other digital and traditional marketing and advertising spends. Search-specific analytics help marketers be more responsible with their budgets by offering a closer look at specific search performance and ROI [define].

SA: Why run search analytics alongside your Web analytics solution?

RZ:Enquisite focuses on natural search referrals. We're able to provide a level of depth beyond what traditional Web analytics tools offer. But search analytics isn't intended to replace Web analytics; rather, it complements Web analytics by shedding detailed insight on how search efforts specifically contribute traffic to a site and which specific keywords perform on a site. Our data is made actionable only when viewed in the context of traditional Web analytics reports and insights.

SA: Can you share examples of how search analytics are able to provide more "detailed insight?"

RZ:A good example is geotargeting. This is commonly used to inform paid search strategy but isn't commonly achievable for SEO efforts. Enquisite's reporting allows for a highly refined and customizable look at geographic performance from natural search. We show performance by city (and, in some cases, by Zip Code) for each individual search referral. This is especially useful because your site can rank differently in search engine results pages, depending on a searcher's location.

Traditional Web analytics would simply show you that you're getting search traffic but wouldn't explain your site's positioning in the SERPs [define] -- or the fact that it differs in geos. It also isn't going to distinguish the fact that some traffic comes from New York and some from Seattle.

SA:We see companies consistently wanting to view SEO success beyond just rank. Can this be more achievable with search analytics tools like Enquisite?

RZ: This has always been a common challenge, and one of the reasons that SEO and SEM performance have always been an apples-to-oranges comparison. The central problem is conversion. SEM managers are able to view conversion data at a keyword level, but SEO reporting has never really been able to tie specific keywords to specific site-side conversions.

We are soon to release conversion functionality, and we believe that Enquisite will be the first solution to offer detailed conversion tracking and analytics for natural-search-referring keywords. We can also identify which search terms, not currently optimized, have the highest potential for driving future traffic and conversion value.

SA:SEO conversion tracking is a promising level of value and insight that marketers haven't been able to realize from traditional tracking or Web analytics solutions. But it also seems like an opportunity for alignment with traditional solutions. How can that be achieved?

RZ:You're right; the value of providing SEO conversion insight is a core reason that dedicated search analytics tools will emerge as a necessary complement for marketing professionals. But you're also correct in identifying the need for alignment. The sophisticated insights that Web analytics provide in terms of looking at path data, funnel analysis, identifying and defining success events, goals, or conversions are crucial. We simply want to focus on specific insight and performance from search. This should both inform Web analytics and be informed by Web analytics. Search analytics insights can also align with other efforts like behavioral targeting.

SA:What are the big opportunities for search analytics in the next 12 to 18 months?

RZ:There is still a wealth of opportunity for search analytics providers to deliver deeper reporting functionality. Firms will need to focus on reporting functions that really address the decision-making needs of search marketing professionals. Accordingly, we really try to base our primary product focus on user feedback. We try to pay attention both to what our customers tell us and what the tight-knit search marketing community discusses. As important as search marketing is, providers need to realize that it is only one aspect of a larger analytics and marketing effort. Marketers only have limited time and attention to dedicate to search analytics. Firms need to try and avoid reporting clutter that over-delivers on analytics that we think are cool or are just nice to know.

You're Invited: Social Media Event at ZAAZ Seattle July 8th

By Ryan Turner | Jun 30, 2008 10:58:45 AM

Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.

People keep asking me when we're going to host another event at the ZAAZ office's notorious Z-Bar in Seattle. Well...

I'm super excited about the lineup for this event, which includes industry leaders from corporate, agency, and independent circles who share passion and expertise in the human dimensions of social computing. Knowing most of these folks pretty well, I think I can guarantee an evening of thought-provoking conversation.

The format for this event will be similar to the previous one I organized, which seemed to go pretty well. We'll have short talks from each speaker followed by a panel discussion. Plus, snacks and beer.

Here's the rundown on the speakers:

Brian Fling of Flingmedia is a full-fledged mobile design geek and human Swiss Army knife. His talk, "Mobile 2.0: Design and Develop for the iPhone and Beyond" will explore some of the social dimensions of the emerging mobile world.

My colleague Justin Marshall is behind some of the most exciting work we've done in social media. His take on social media for marketers, titled "Money, Media, and Your Mom's Peach Cobbler: Social Media Marketing Done Right," offers guidance for marketers looking to engage with customers online.

Samantha Starmer is a highly-respected thought leader in the local information architecture community. In addition to her work at REI, she co-teaches the UW Information School's Summer IA Institute. Her talk, "Single Athletic Female seeking Single Slender Male: The Marriage of Social Media and Metadata," promises to reveal the secrets of better online living through metadata.

Nancy White of Full Circle Associates has been doing online community since WAY before it was cool. Her broadly-ranging expertise includes online learning and facilitation, communities of practice, technology in the developing world, and social technology in general. Her talk is titled "Slow Community."

Wendy Chisholm is a former co-editor of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and a passionate advocate for universally-accessible design online and off. She's currently working on what promises to become "THE book" on accessibility for the emerging Web.

We're really lucky in the Seattle area to have access to such quality thinkers and experts. I hope you'll join us, and if you do plan to attend, drop me a note at ryant (at) zaaz dot com so I can get a rough headcount.

The Facebook event is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=66791410200.

I hope to see you there!

Consulting Skills: Winning with Logic, Not Bullets

By Ryan Turner | May 19, 2008 7:40:21 PM

Microsoft and Yahoo: A Story of 'Foreclosure Rage'

By Rich Devine | Apr 14, 2008 3:37:28 PM

I recently saw a Wall Street Journal story on "Foreclosure Rage". With the increasing rate of foreclosures as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, more and more foreclosed homes are left by former owners in a state of significant damage. Stories are told of punched-in walls, stripped-up carpet, intentional water damage, and locking pets in rooms to do what pets do.

This has become such a widespread problem that banks are offering homeowners incentive packages from hundreds to thousands of dollars just to leave their homes in good order before handing over the keys.

Regardless of how blame should be assigned or shared -- whether to irrational, predatory banks and creditors, or to irresponible mortgage holders that couldn't manage finances and obligations appropriately -- it's tragic to see the behavior of people as the hammer is falling. This is behavior that would never occur from homeowners able to manage their households without the threat of foreclosure.

With the drama unfolding between Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google -- I can't help but draw a parallel to "Foreclosure Rage".

Yahoo never successfully adapted to a 2.0 era centered on evolving, accessible, user-centric services -- at least not successfully enough to compete with Google. While Yahoo was the original portal, and for all purposes the orginal search engine, and the owner of what was really the orignal paid-search platform -- they were passed and lapped by Google and never really responded with any substantial competitive response.

Now Microsoft -- ever the giant, unsympathetic bank -- is poised to foreclose on Yahoo's failure to stay competitive. And like the rage-filled homeowner, Yahoo is exhibiting vindictive, irrational behavior that it would absolutely never consider were it not under threat of takeover. Of course Microsoft fared no better in their efforts to compete with Google; but like the giant bank, Microsoft has the fiscal means that Yahoo does not.

Recent comScore data credits Google with 59.2 share of search queries, Yahoo with 21.6, and Microsoft with 9.6. In response to Microsoft's acquisition efforts, Yahoo has decided to rip up the carpets and test an "ad partnership" with Google. Keep in mind this is only months after Yahoo's launch of a brand new search platform that cost the company more than two billion dollars.

Now, what would amount to a Google query share of at least 80 percent, won't really be the case. The initial test only calls for Google ad serving across three percent of Yahoo's search results. Still, there has to be a rev-share involved, and I can't see how this arrangement would benefit Yahoo in any way -- either in the short term or the long term -- especially considering this two billion dollar investment Yahoo already made to better serve their own ads, not to mention the recurring costs to support their own search operations. But again, this doesn't really have anything to do with revenue or business logic. What does it matter what the carpets look like if the bank is going to take your home anyway, right?

Clearly, Yahoo would never be so willing to giftwrap three percent of its query share to Google under normal conditions -- but foreclosure is near, the hammer is falling, and Yahoo will do some strange things to show that big bad bank in Redmond how it feels. Hopefully, no pets will be involved.

Site Redesign: The Best Time for SEO Strategy, Part 1

By Rich Devine | Apr 10, 2008 3:50:10 PM

Because Search Engine Optimization is generally considered a demand generation or marketing activity, firms and marketing professionals usually consider the timing of a formal SEO strategy the same way they would for other demand-gen acitivites like email, paid search, display advertising, etc.

For example, if your site is undergoing an extensive design or redesign effort, it just doesn't make any sense to roll out a grandiose paid search strategy until after your site has been launched. You need to allow for some seasoning to the site so you can evaluate relevant, post-launch analytics. You'll want to identify what landing pages are now appropriate for paid search campaigns. Perhaps there are new content and keyword considerations that need to be incorporated.

However, the timing for SEO is entirely different. There is no better time to plan and execute an SEO strategy than during and in concert with a redesign effort. In fact, not being consious of SEO considerations during a redesign can cause significant damage to what ever SEO position you had achieved from your former site.

There is also a huge cost efficiency. Much of the recommendations that come from a formal SEO project are design and architectural in nature anyway; but the cost associated with executing those recommendations is often to great, or the ability to drive such change and recommendations is limited. During a redesign, those activities are happening anyway -- so it is crucial that SEO strategy inform redesign efforts.

USER EXPERIENCE & SEO

At ZAAZ our User Experience (U/X) Team pratices and advocates User-Centered Design. This approach involves understanding your goals as a business and the purpose of your digital and site strategy. This informs a conscious identification of who your audiences and users really are. Then, you seek to understand those users through user research, usability studies, analytics data, industry benchmarking data, and survey data. Based on a solid understanding of who your users are, you can design a user-centered site that achieves business and site goals. You're able to appropriately organize content, apply taxonomy, create navigation, build wireframes, and inform any kind of interactive or application based experiences that are appropriate for your users.

But, all too often, the practice of User-Centered Design forgets one singularly important type of user: those silent robots from Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

Understand that in essence, all these robots or crawlers try to do is pass some kind of judgement as to how usable or user-centered your site really is. This affects your position in search engine rankings. The challenge is that search engine bots are obviously not nearly as smart as humans. What may be a highly effective user experience for humans may be deemed in-effective by bots or even ignored altogether.

The other consideration is keyword relevancy. Information architecture, or how content is organzied on a site is usally performed based on what is most appropriate and effective for the user, as it should be. But it is critical that attention also be given to which keywords are used and how they are positioned within that information architecture. Using and placing the right keywords in the right position during the initial stages of information architecture and during latters stages when actual content is positioned -- provides significant SEO results.

Keyword-content efforts are most successful when U/X and SEO teams collaborate at the right time. Before the teams convene, make sure the following tasks are complete:

1. Your U/X team must perform the initial sorting and content organization activities that inform general information architecture, navigation, sitemapping, etc.

2. Your SEO team must conduct throrough keyword research, prioritization, and categorization. They need to discover all potentially relevant terms, categorize those terms into appropriate groupings, and then prioritize those terms based on potential traffic volume, rank difficulty, and value.

SEO and U/X teams then convene to share learnings and inform how high-value keyword targets can be inserted. This affects navigation, naming conventions, file structure, etc. Both teams will be surprised at what they thought was logical from their perspective versus what will drive performance both from a user perspective and a search engine perspective.

Todd Friesen of Range Online Media shares a classic example of this in describing some of Nike's site efforts. As part of their brand proposition and messaging strategy, Nike prefers to use the term "footwear" to describe their product and experience. They feel it is more representative of what Nike offers than the limited term "shoe". But both common sense and some basic keyword research will indicate that terms involving "shoe" drive far more search volume than "footwear".

Again, a balance has to be struck between U/X and SEO -- SEO doesn't always have to win, but at the very least, the decision should be informed based on the impact and opportunity cost related to SEO.

NEXT TIME, PART TWO...

Check back next time when we continue to address SEO and Site Redesigns. We'll cover considerations for site development and production, including a discussion of negotiating dynamic techniques with SEO such as Flash, JavaScript, Silverlight, etc.

We'll also discuss how to preserve the footprint that you've already achieved from your current or former site as you launch your new one. 

Balancing SEO and SEM

By Rich Devine | Mar 18, 2008 7:27:52 PM

We're often asked how SEM strategy should be aligned with SEO. I usually respond to the question with another question or two, because the answer really depends on who is asking.

Is this the paid search manager who is trying to figure out ideal placement and bid strategy for keywords that already have strong natural presence?

Is this the SEO manager who is looking for keyword data to help inform her SEO efforts?

Is this an executive who owns the paid search budget looking for ways to cut costs where he thinks natural search ranking is already high enough?

Or is this someone really smart like a low-level, day-to-day search specialist who thinks that maybe, just maybe, there should actually be some alignment in messaging between paid and natural search results?

So before I answer, let me state that I'm thinking along the lines of our low-level search specialist.

Message Balance for the Funnel

When I discuss finding strategic balance between SEM & SEO, I like to think in terms of a purchase or conversion funnel. Customers reside at various states of the funnel -- likewise a customer's search activity is likely to differ depending on where they reside in the funnel. One way to balance SEO and SEM efforts is to use each respective method as a message vehicle for targeting different customers at different states of the funnel.

Generally we'll find a high volume of clicks for awareness related queries and traffic. Click volume and traffic then decreases as users move down the funnel toward a conversion or buying activity. Yet while volume decreases, the effectiveness of clicks and traffic increases.

   

This is really important to consider as it relates to the messaging of both paid and natural search results. If your paid search result includes messaging that targets folks in the awareness and consideration states of a funnel -- such as "Learn about Ford Trucks" or "Discover the 2008 Ford Mustang" -- you can reasonably expect high click volume, high traffic, and commensurate click costs with relatively low performance for that ad.

But if you limit your messaging to specific calls of action that targets folks at lower states of the funnel -- for example: "Ford Mustang -- Search local dealer inventories today." -- you can expect generally lower click volume, and commensurately lower cost, but at a higher performance.

The magic really happens if you can align the messaging of natural search results and paid search results so that they compliment and reinforce each other -- addressing folks at all states of the funnel.

In an ideal world, where you have SEO and SEM visibility for the same search query, you'd like to balance messaging according to the graphic below. High performance, low click/cost traffic from SEM ads, and high click volume from natural search results, where there is no scale in click costs.

Keep in mind, this is an approach. It is a useful approach for messaging alignment, and certainly for finding cost efficiencies for paid search budgets. But consider what it means for your product and your message.

Getting Started

1. A typical challenge to this approach is getting buy-in from the different groups that manage SEO and SEM efforts. At ZAAZ we work with enterprise level clients, and while we always recommend managing SEM and SEO efforts in concert, by the same team --  we still find clients appealing to different groups or agencies for management of SEO and SEM efforts separately. But at some point up the ladder, there is a manager who who has responsibility for both. Preach the wisdom of a balanced approach, and allow the manager to encourage cooperation between different groups.

2. Discover mutual visibility between Natural and Paid results. Start by assembling a priority list of keywords, and then cross-referencing SERP visibility between paid results and natural results. You'll want to pay attention to average position across Google, Yahoo, and MSN for your paid results. For natural results, you'll want to pull rank reports for each publisher. Where you find mutual visibility on keywords, compare titles and descriptions for SEM vs. Natural results.

3. When comparing results that reside on the same SERP, think about the funnel, and revise your message accordingly. If you change meta-data like titles and descriptions, make sure you are conscious about maintaining whatever keyword strategy makes sense for that page. Remember to follow best practices for character limitations.

4. Measure your results from site side analytics and paid search reporting. Validate your assumptions for how traffic and performance should decrease or increase. Pay attention to your results, and use them to refine the approach on an ongoing basis.